2506: Fifteen

Well, it’s Final Fantasy XV day and I’ve spent a good five or six hours playing it this evening.

It’s good. Real good.

I haven’t progressed that far in the story as yet as it’s simply fun to wander around exploring, doing sidequests and listening to the soundtracks of old Final Fantasy games while the gang drive around in their car. However, I’m very much looking forward to the world opening up a bit more — I’m penned in to a relatively “small” area at the moment by barricades that prevent going more than a certain distance by road or on foot — and seeing what is out there to discover.

Even in this fairly fenced-off starter area it’s clear that it’s going to be a fun ride, though. In particular, I’m very much enjoying the combat; far from being a hack-and-slash action game along the lines of something like Kingdom Hearts, it manages to blend what looks like fast-paced action with relatively strategic, cerebral combat that rewards careful positioning and exploitation of enemy resistances and weaknesses.

And the world of Eos is one simultaneously filled with wonderment and pleasingly familiar mundanity. In the first few hours, I’ve spent time at a seaside resort, a motel and a truck stop, but also fought recurring Final Fantasy monsters such as goblins and flans, and run away screaming at the sight of an Iron Giant. I’ve hunted down groups of monsters and fished up a meal for a stray cat. And I’ve witnessed the devastation that Niflheim wreaked on protagonist Noctis’ home city of Insomnia.

And the music. Dear lord. I already knew that the soundtrack was going to be something special from the preview tracks I’d previously heard, but the full experience is something else. Multiple battle themes according to the context make me very happy indeed, particularly as they’re all wonderfully energetic, blasting pieces full of drama and excitement. But the more incidental music is very pleasant, too, changing according to the time of day and your surroundings and, in settlements, adjusting its mix according to whether you’re inside or outside.

The whole concept of it being “a fantasy based on reality” has been pulled off very effectively so far. The world and the places you visit are all very plausible and realistic, but overlaid on the top of all that is the wonderful sci-fi/fantasy blend that Final Fantasy has been so good at for years. It really, really works as a setting, and I’m looking forward to exploring it in more depth over the coming weeks.

For now, though, as I have an eight-hour shift to work tomorrow and I have a cold coming on, I should probably call it a night there. Probably.

2505: Final Fantasy

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With Final Fantasy XV out tomorrow and my excitement for it at an extreme level, I’ve decided that I’m going to devote the next month on my other site MoeGamer to an in-depth exploration of the series as a whole.

Final Fantasy as a whole may be a little outside my usual mission with MoeGamer — it is neither underappreciated nor overlooked — but it’s worth discussing nonetheless, particularly with regard to those installments along the way that are regarded less favourably.

It’s also worth discussing as it’s a series with a long, interesting history, and can quite rightly be described as genre-defining alongside its longtime rival Dragon Quest.

Mostly I want to talk about it because it’s been important to me for a long time now. Nearly 20 years, in fact, which is a scary prospect, as my first encounter with the series is still absolutely fresh in my mind, as if I’d just experienced it yesterday.

I first heard of Final Fantasy VII, my first point of contact with the series, through my brother. I had a PlayStation at the time (well, more accurately, I had a hand-me-down Japanese PlayStation that my brother left behind) but, what with it being a Japanese model, I hadn’t really explored the games available for it beyond the three I already had: Ridge Racer, Tekken and Raiden Project.

Hearing my brother describe Final Fantasy VII made me want to try it, though. I’d already had experience with story-heavy games thanks to our family’s mutual love of point-and-click adventure titles from Sierra and LucasArts, but this sounded like something different; something more. Specifically, the thing that got me interested in it was the promise of a scene partway through the game where pretty much everyone who had played it ended up crying. (Said scene is now one of the most famous scenes in all of gaming, but back in ’97, it was easier to remain unspoiled.)

So, reading up on the old “disc swap” trick that allowed you to play different region games on a PlayStation, I propped my PlayStation’s lid open with a biro lid and a bit of Blu-Tack and inserted the first of the three discs of my shiny new copy of Final Fantasy VII, not sure what to expect.

I was immediately blown away by the spectacular video intro sequence that moved almost seamlessly into in-game action, with polygonal characters moving perfectly in sync with the prerendered background camera angles. (I was then slightly distracted by the rather primitive field screen character models Final Fantasy VII is now somewhat notorious for, but I quickly became accustomed to them.)

The music drew me in. The action started right away. It was like being part of a movie. Then I got into my first battle and, having never really played an RPG before, was initially baffled. Once again, though, it didn’t take me long to become accustomed, and there was no turning back from that point: the game had me well and truly in its clutches.

I enthused about the game to my friends at school. They were initially skeptical, but it didn’t take a lot of convincing to get them to give it a try. And before long, they were as obsessed with this spectacular new game as I was. We played it through together, discussing things we’d found and things we’d achieved; we’d complete it, and start over again, eager to enjoy the story all over again. We devoured guidebooks and online FAQs about the game, keen to see everything it was possible to see. And, on one particularly memorable occasion fueled by tequila and various other intoxicants, we played for 36 hours straight, my friend Woody passing out midway through the G-Bike sequence, having some very peculiar dreams and suddenly waking up demanding to know “what’s an X-Walker?” (To this day, we have no idea. X-Potions? Sure. X-Walker? No clue.)

The impact Final Fantasy VII had on me drew me to explore the rest of the series. While at the time I found the NES original a little hard to appreciate — it was just a bit too clunky in comparison to the later games — from IV onwards (or II as it was known back then thanks to the fact Final Fantasy II, III and V didn’t see Western releases until many years after their NES and SNES original versions) in particular I found them to be just as compelling despite their more primitive visuals and sounds.

These were games that told stories that resonated with me. Stories about people who rose up from humble beginnings, gathering a group of close companions and achieving something incredible. This sort of thing is seen as cliched as all hell these days, but there’s a reason the standard JRPG tropes have been a thing for as long as they have: even before video games, this story structure is proven to be an effective way of telling a heroic epic.

Even in those early days, though, I could tell that the Final Fantasy series wasn’t one to rest on its laurels. While I had a fairly Western RPG feel to it with its completely mute, characterless party, II introduced the series convention of having a party of predefined characters with actual personalities. III brought us the Job system for the first time. IV gave us an incredibly detailed story full of emotion. V refined the Job system further. VI turned the narrative conventions of the series on its head by not really having a “main” character, instead allowing us the opportunity to spend time with an enormous ensemble cast. And so on, and so on.

I’ll talk about this in detail once I start writing the MoeGamer pieces, but Final Fantasy is a series that has constantly reinvented itself over and over again. Even in those installments that seem superficially similar (I-III, IV-VI, VII-IX) there are enough unique components to each title to make them distinct from one another, and from X onwards the series has enjoyed even more drastic, dramatic reinventions with each installment. And this isn’t even getting into the myriad spin-off titles, many of which are even more fondly regarded than the mainline titles in the series.

As you can tell, I’ll have plenty to write about. And I’m afraid you’re almost certainly going to have to put up with a lot of enthusing about XV on this here site from tomorrow onwards, too. I make no apologies for my excitement in this regard.

Now, just a good night’s sleep and a day of work between me and my first adventures in the lands of Eos. Can’t wait.

2504: Tears of the Prophets

Reached the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s sixth season this evening and despite inadvertently spoiling myself on the death of a major character some months earlier (though given Deep Space Nine’s age, I’m surprised I lasted this long without spoilers!), it remained an impactful episode and an excellent season finale.

I really like how Deep Space Nine developed. While it started as something of a “soap opera in space”, which is why some people found it a little dull when compared to the galaxy-spanning adventures of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the gradual buildup of the Dominion storyline into all-out war throughout the sixth season gave the show scope to deftly and subtly readjust its focus over time.

At the end of the sixth season, it’s still recognisably distinct from the more “mobile” Star Trek series such as The Next Generation and Voyager, but the action following Sisko and his comrades into battle against the Dominion gets the action off the station often enough to keep things fresh and interesting — and Tears of the Prophets, the sixth season finale, features some spectacular space combat sequences, an area in which Deep Space Nine generally excels.

One thing I’ve found particularly interesting about the show as a whole is the development of the character Gul Dukat. Initially presented as a character whose motivations and overall alignment wasn’t entirely clear, he’s had plenty of significant moments over the course of the series, ranging from joyful to tragedy. When he’s at his lowest ebb, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, because the show certainly kicks the shit out of him, but Tears of the Prophets makes it abundantly clear why it took such pains to make us sympathise with Dukat as he lost everything he held dear.

Dukat’s losses drive him to absolute desperation. He willingly allows himself to be possessed by a Pah-Wraith, the antithesis to the “Prophets”, aliens who live in the wormhole that Deep Space Nine protects. The Wraith kills [REDACTED so you don’t have to suffer like I did] and apparently cuts off the connection between the Prophets and Bajor before leaving Dukat’s body. We’re left to see Dukat with a few regrets — most notably the death of [AHEM] — but an overall sense that he’s enacted vengeance that he’s satisfied with.

This sequence — and the consequences therein — highlight another reason why I enjoy Deep Space Nine: it doesn’t attempt to explain everything away with (fake but plausible) science. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of traditional Star Trek technobabble throughout the series, but also there’s a real sense that some things simply are unknowable and impossible to understand by humanity at its stage of development in the 24th century. The recognition and embracing of this is the basis of religion (or spiritualism at the very least) and Deep Space Nine as a whole handles this sort of thing very nicely. It also makes for some extremely dramatic moments, as metaphysical, “supernatural” things are far less predictable than those which can be explained by science.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the series ends, and am very glad that I’ve finally got around to watching it all the way through for the first time. I’m even more glad that doing so is a simple matter of watching it on Netflix rather than collecting however many hundred VHS cassettes would have formed the complete run on its original release!

2503: What We Do in the Shadows

Watched a pretty great movie this evening: What We Do in the Shadows.

This is a 2014 movie written by and starring Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi. It’s a mockumentary film that focuses on the lives of a household of vampires that live in Wellington, New Zealand, and chronicles both the mundanity of their daily lives and some of the more outlandish events that transpire over the course of several months.

It’s a brilliantly written, beautifully acted film, delightful in its understatedness and use of awkward humour. The mockumentary style is used effectively in a similar style to The Office — there’s no commentary on the action, it’s pure “fly on the wall” observation, and in presenting itself in this manner it seems oddly plausible even with the obviously supernatural nonsense going on throughout.

The movie captures the struggle between vampires’ baser urges and their desire to retain at least some of their humanity. The central characters are all rather likeable chaps despite obviously being killers, and it’s all set up so that we sympathise with them. You get the real impression that they feed only out of necessity, and certainly aren’t averse to befriending humans, as exemplified by the presence of “Stu”, a singularly unremarkable man who works in IT that the gang all latch onto and make a pact never to feed on.

It’s not an angsty vampire movie by any means, however. There are a couple of tragic scenes that are played down to such a degree that they’re almost shrugged off, and this is both amusing and representative of the rather casual attitude towards existence that those blessed or cursed with eternal life tend to hold. The movie also subverts the audience’s expectations in a number of places, particularly with regard to one of the central cast members supposed nemesis, known only as “The Beast”.

It’s a lot of fun, in short. It’s a movie where not a lot happens — much like mockumentary TV series such as The Office didn’t really have a lot going on either — but this means it can focus almost entirely on the characterisation of the central cast. In doing so, we’re led to sympathise and empathise with them despite their obviously dark tendencies, and shown that a touch of humanity can show up in the strangest of places.

Most of all, though, it’s a movie that’s just plain funny, whether it’s the ridiculous visual gags involving the vampires’ ability to fly, the overblown gore when one of them accidentally nicks a major artery while feeding and makes “a real mess in there”, or the hilarious rivalry between the vampires and the werewolves, with both groups acting like silly teenagers rather than immortal beings of pure darkness.

Highly recommended, in other words; if you get the chance to sit down and watch it, it’s well worth a couple of hours of your time, even if you’re not typically into horror or vampire movies. It’s just some wonderfully gentle — and, at times, deliberately awkward — humour with plenty of heart, and a real feeling that everyone involved just wanted the audience to have as much fun as they did. And, for me anyway, something being produced with that kind of attitude is well worth praising and enjoying in this age of increasingly commercialised productions.

2502: Black Friday

Spare a thought for the retail workers of the world, who have to work on days like today.

I’m still not 100% clear on where Black Friday came from — and, moreover, why it crossed the pond from America to Europe — but I have pretty mixed feelings about it on the whole.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have a period of time when you know you can rely on getting low prices and decent deals on things that you might be interested in buying. In the online sector, events such as Steam sales and “Cyber Monday” deals demonstrate this clearly.

On the other hand, compressing aforementioned low prices and decent deals into a single weekend — or, in some cases, a single day — seems a little counterproductive when it comes to brick-and-mortar operations in particular.

An event such as Black Friday means that stores are probably going to be rammed full of people, making it a less pleasant experience for everyone shopping and significantly harder work for those people working the store who have to try and answer questions, ensure everyone gets served, keep the shop looking as presentable as possible and ensure no-one is wandering out of the door in possession of things they haven’t paid for.

At the same time, though, an event such as Black Friday may encourage people to pick up things that they otherwise wouldn’t have thought to purchase or been able to purchase at their normally higher prices. I personally haven’t bought anything this Black Friday — at least partly because I was working the damn thing — but if I was going to buy something like an Xbox One (the one “next-gen” console I still don’t own), Black Friday would appear to be a decent time to do so.

Like I say, mixed feelings. And if you’ve been out there in the rush and the chaos of people trying to get a hot deal, as I say, spare a thought for the folks who are rushed off their feet trying to make sure everyone leaves satisfied.

Now I’m going to bed to pass out and wait for my feet to stop hurting.

2501: Thanksgiving

We don’t really “do” Thanksgiving over here in the UK, but I thought it would be a nice thought exercise in positivity to use today’s post to simply list some things I’m thankful for. There’s plenty that is shit in my life at the moment, but this post is not about that.

I am thankful to my wife for standing by me while times have been tough, even as she had her own shit to deal with.

I am thankful for my friends who have stuck by me through the difficult times in my life over the last few years. Some of them I speak to more often than others; some of them I see more often than others; some of them I don’t speak to or see nearly as often as I’d like. I’m still thankful for all of them.

I am thankful for my family who, likewise, has stuck by me through the trials and tribulations of the last few years. There has always been support there when I needed it, even if I didn’t really know how to ask for it without feeling bad.

I am thankful for those who read my blog, whether they’re silent readers or those who reach out to talk about the things I’ve posted. The purpose and angle of this blog has sort of evolved over the years, but as I said yesterday, I’ve always found it to be a helpful outlet.

I am thankful to video games for providing me with something to be passionate about; a medium that excites and inspires me on a daily basis. I am particularly thankful to those creators (mostly, though not exclusively, of Japanese origin) who have created works that particularly resonated with me for one reason or another; titles with which I could get emotionally invested, or titles in which the main casts became like “friends”.

I am thankful to the people I interact with online who are interested in similar things to me, who don’t judge me negatively or make assumptions based on my tastes, and who are happy to be enthusiastic with me.

I am thankful to the written word for providing me with a more reliable means of expressing myself than the spoken word.

I am thankful that I have somehow survived all the trials I’ve faced to date, which gives me a small amount of hope that one day, someday, everything will finally turn out all right.

2500: Traditional 500-Post Pondering

So, post 2,500. I was going to try and write something meaningful, but then I worked a 12-hour shift (voluntarily) and now I’m knackered and my feet are killing me, so my heart’s not quite in it. Still, onward we go.

Occasionally in recent months I’ve found myself wondering if I should keep this blog going, and/or if so, how long for. Why am I still doing it, who is it for and am I getting anything out of the experience?

On the whole, I think that yes, I do find it to be a valuable and helpful experience on the whole. It’s a means for me to express myself to people who know me in a way that I might not find particularly easy or practical to do so in person. It’s a means for me to talk about the things I love without having to worry about boring people in the same room as me — if you’re not interested in something I talk about for a post or two, simply don’t read it. And, of course, it’s a means to continue practicing the craft of writing, not that there’s a “right” way to do it. (Except for those people who insist on writing all their posts in lower-case letters. Those people are wrong.)

There are things on here that I’m glad I’ve talked about, and things I wish I’d never brought up. There are good times and bad times; there are things I’m happy about and things that make me infuriated.

More than anything, though, this blog is me. It’s a record of, frankly, what has ended up being a rather turbulent period in my life, and it’s been something I can focus on each day even if everything else around me might have been shit. It’s been a great outlet and a good means of broaching difficult topics as well as a place where I can happily vent my feelings, good and bad, on a daily basis.

So yes, I’m carrying on. Until when, I can’t say. But 2,500 daily posts in, it kind of seems like a shame to stop now, huh?

2499: One Week to Go

Until what, you ask? Until Final Fantasy XV, of course.

Regular readers will know that I don’t often get hyped up about big-budget releases, but ever since I played Final Fantasy VII for the first time back in my schooldays, the mainline Final Fantasy series has been something that I cannot — will not — miss out on. And the signs are good for XV to be an incredible installment.

Here’s a new trailer if you’re not sure what the fuss is about:

There are so many things I like about this trailer, and what it promises from the full game.

Broadly speaking, I really like the “fantasy based on reality” idea that appears to have been the main impetus behind its design. Final Fantasy XV’s game world, Eos, is based on the modern age in a believable manner — right down to your party sometimes spending downtime with their heads stuck in their respective smartphones rather than talking to one another — but incorporates classic Final Fantasy material in amongst all that. I’m a big fan of this idea; I love the concept of “supernatural crazy things happen in a world that is like ours”, so I’m very much on board with Final Fantasy XV’s overall setting.

One of the things I’m most interested in is the small playable cast, which consists of just four members plus occasional guests. This is one of the smallest playable casts in Final Fantasy history, though the last time the party was this small (FFI and FFIII; you could perhaps make the argument for FFV too) the technology wasn’t really there to do anything interesting with characterisation. (EDIT: descarte25 quite rightly pointed out in the comments that we’ve also seen small casts in X-2, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.) Now, though, we have incredibly realistic character models doing believable things in a plausible fantasy world. And the small cast size means that everyone is going to get some exploration; no-one is going to feel like a “bonus party member” who is little more than a walking collection of stats and abilities.

It’s an interesting bunch of characters, too. Noct, while looking like one of the most emo teenagers in the entire history of the series — which is saying something in a series that features Squall Leonhart — has already shown himself across a couple of demos and an anime series to be a likeable, interesting and anything but morose protagonist with plenty of depth to his character. The fact that it is his story rather than an unlikely group of heroes who just happen to stumble into their destiny to save the world puts an interesting twist on the series’ prior formula. Noct starts the game as someone unique and special, though perhaps doesn’t quite know what to do with his status, and thus relies on his friends to help him through his journey.

One of the key themes of the game as a whole is intended to be the bonds of brotherhood between the four characters in the main cast. They grew up together, fight together and live together on the road as Noct continues his journey; although the circumstances of each of them meeting, as depicted in the Brotherhood anime, were anything but natural — not least because Noct is a prince — it’s clear that their mutual relationships are going to develop and deepen over the course of the adventure. The best RPGs convey a clear sense of party members being true companions, closer than family, and if Final Fantasy XV pulls it off correctly, it’s going to be a memorable ensemble cast for sure.

Outside of the story, there are a bunch of gameplay systems I’m looking forward to, too. The Ascension system looks like an intriguingly deep means of developing the four characters’ abilities, for one, and the magic system, where you mix elemental energy with other items to produce all manner of different effects, looks particularly fascinating. Magic is also interesting in that it has an impact on the environment around you, too; fling a Fire spell and the surroundings will burn and become scorched; fling a Blizzard spell and everything will become coated in frost. This is not something that is normally acknowledged in role-playing games, so I’m interested to see how it fits in here.

There look to be a wide variety of sidequests along the way, too, including Final Fantasy XII-style hunts. I’ll be interested to see how deep these sidequests are; technically the Behemoth hunt in the Episode Duscae demo was a sidequest, and that had a ton of things to do along the way, including investigating the area, tracking the beast to its lair and devising a spectacular strategy to deal with it — including abilities for each character that were unique to that fight rather than simple hack and slash. While I’m not counting on all sidequests being that interesting, the designers have claimed that they’ve made an attempt for there not to be “filler” content (“bring me 50 pelts from the monsters on the plains!”) and so hopefully this stuff will be worth doing. It remains to be seen how well they achieve this.

That’s probably enough enthusing for now, because you can bet there’ll be plenty more to come next week once the game’s actually in my PS4. Here’s an hour-long video of some of the music from the game.

2498: Contributing Something

I went back to “proper” work today for the first time in quite a while. It’s nothing fancy or exciting — just a seasonal retail job in our local video game emporium — but I enjoyed my time there last year and was fortunate enough to be called up to help out over the impending holiday season.

While retail is fairly mundane work for the most part, it is at least a nice opportunity to get out of the house, do something and actually interact with human beings, which is something I feel like I’ve been sorely missing for a while. Don’t get me wrong, social anxiety is still present and correct, but I feel like I can usually cope better with interactions in a structured environment such as retail, where both parties involved in a conversation are there for a specific reason. The customer is there to either get some information or buy something, and I am there to provide whatever it is they are asking for, or to provide them with a suitable alternative if the thing they want isn’t available.

It can be quite rewarding, too — not financially, since retail pay remains fairly poo across the board, but in terms of knowing that you’ve helped someone. At this time of year in particular, a lot of people come into shops they might not normally go into wanting to buy presents, and this means that they often need advice. Well, that exhaustive knowledge of video games had to be useful for something, didn’t it?

Since I worked my first retail job — I’ve done several over the years — I’ve found that the way I communicate with customers usually puts them at ease and encourages them to trust what I am saying. I’m not sure exactly what it is — perhaps it’s the fact I display genuine enthusiasm for the things I’m talking about, or perhaps my teacher training lets me explain things suitably for all levels of knowledge — but it usually seems to go down well, and I’ve sent many a customer on their way with a smile on their face over the course of the last few years.

I’m not sure I’m cut out for anything more than working the floor, keeping things tidy and ringing up sales — although I guess you don’t know until you’re in a position to take a bit more responsibility and try it for yourself — but for now at least, this is providing both something to do and some money coming in, which is what I needed.

What will happen to me next year is anyone’s guess. But I suppose that’s the holiday period covered, at least.

2497: The Further Adventures of Class Zero

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After some further time with Final Fantasy Type-0, I’m now 100% on board with what it has to offer. It’s a slow burn, to be sure — its rather drab early hours don’t really sell it all that well, but by the time it’s flinging Alexander, Bahamut Zero and Gilgamesh (including the correct music) around with gay abandon it’s hard not to enjoy the ride.

I’m planning a Final Fantasy month over at MoeGamer at some point in the near future, so I’ll write more about this then, but I did want to comment a little on the game’s tone, because it’s markedly different from the mainline Final Fantasy series, and makes this abundantly clear from the outset.

Mainline Final Fantasy games are benchmark JRPGs for many people; they’re regarded as the quintessential example of “young hero gathers a band of companions and saves the world”, despite a number of installments deviating from this stereotypical formula. One thing you can say with a reasonable amount of confidence, however, is that, on balance, they’re optimistic affairs, all about bonds of friendship and love overcoming great evil and that sort of thing. This isn’t to say that the series doesn’t have its dark moments — in fact, several installments’ darkest moments make up some of the most iconic and influential moments in all of gaming history — but on the whole, it’s a series designed to make you feel like part of a heroic epic with all the optimism that involves.

Type-0, meanwhile, occupies the complete other end of the spectrum. I talked a little yesterday about how it de-emphasises the role of the individual in favour of a large cast of characters, and the further you play, the more this becomes apparent. Part of Type-0‘s background lore is the fact that when someone dies, anyone who knew them forgets who they were, even if they were very close. This is one of many reflections the game makes on the horrors of war; a very literal interpretation of Stalin’s supposed (and possibly misattributed) quote “when one dies, it is a tragedy; when a million die, it is a statistic”.

Type-0 lays it on fairly thick with its depictions of the brutality and the senselessness of war. It doesn’t do so in a particularly preachy manner, however; the game’s setup is such that it’s fair to spend some time pondering whether anyone — including the side you’re on — are the “good guys” in the conflict depicted. Instead, we simply see various horrors unfolding, both through the eyes of Class Zero on the ground, and through the distant detachment of the narrator during the documentary-style cutscenes that punctuate the main beats of the narrative as a whole.

One particularly chilling moment comes in the aftermath of a mission late in the game, which culminates with your side in the conflict summoning Alexander as an ultimate weapon of mass destruction; in order to do so, many of your allies give up their lives as they channel their magic and life force into the summoning. The devastation that Alexander wreaks is immense, presented to you in simple, cold statistics — white text on a black screen — after the battle is over. While in the heat of the moment, Alexander’s summoning is pure Final Fantasy fanservice, the realisation that the spectacular light show you just witnessed cost the lives of many people on both sides of the conflict makes you wonder whether or not it was worth it.

I’m nearing the end of the game now, I think; just two more chapters to go. I’ll be interested to see how it ends — particularly if it concludes on as bleak a note as its opening sequence, featuring a seriously wounded soldier trying his best to reach his destination with his also wounded chocobo, then finally dying, forgotten, on the streets as the conflict continues to rage around him. I’m also interested to do a second playthrough once I’ve beaten it once; not only are you at a more suitable level to tackle the optional “Expert Trials” on a second playthrough, there are also additional missions called “Code Crimson” which add additional details and context to the story.

Considering Type-0 is a spinoff game in the Final Fantasy series rather than a mainline installment — and considering it originated as a Japan-only, handheld-only title — it’s impressive quite how much lore has been packed into this game, all of it reviewable through an in-game encyclopaedia. You don’t need to know most of it to appreciate the story, mind you; it’s simply there as “additional reading” if you find it interesting. While I wasn’t sure about Type-0 when I first started playing it, the longer I spend with it, the more fascinating I find this war-torn world that seems to be on a collision course with absolute disaster, so I very much welcome this additional content, particularly as some of it comes in the form of cutscenes that explain what happens to a number of minor characters along the way.

I’ll have definitely beaten it at least once by the time Final Fantasy XV rolls around; whether I’ll have made it through any more of that remains to be seen, but now I’m familiar with how it all works and got to know the characters, I’m certainly up for a bit of New Game Plus.